The blood wasn't the worst part of my job. The average person thought it was when I told them I cleaned up crime scenes after a body was removed. Most adults have a little over a gallon flowing in their veins. Throw in a violent death and things get messy. I've had to clean sticky pools of it from floors, scrub splatters off of walls, and scrap it off ceilings.

  The second guess is typically the smell. That used to be my main problem when I first started. Death has, let's say, a unique odor. The longer a body has been sitting, the worse it gets. The coppery scent of blood pales in comparison to the stench of a perforated bowel and decomposition. Oh, and shit. Literally. The anal sphincter muscles relax in death. I vomited at the site of my first job.

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  It's not the blood or the smell or even the other questionable fluids. It's not the inevitable chalk outline of a victim, either.

  No, it's the deceased themselves. The haunted look in their eyes as I clean up the mess. Their whispers of confusion. The worst is when I tell them they can't come home with me.